Are there really any affordable consumer grade wireless adapters that have the capability of four spatial streams? I ask because if there aren't then paying the premium for "600N" maybe be a waste. I know that Intel started selling relatively affordable 3x3:3 cards, but that's still going to cap-out at 450MB for MAC/PHY layer speeds. To me, what's more important is having simultaneous access to both bands (2.4Ghz, and 5.1Ghz) so I can avoid interference when possible. Anything over a single 150MB spatial stream at that point is just gravy. Especially since most of my network at home is still 10/100, and most of my larger data transfers are over the Internet ... so well, no ISP around me offers speed in excess of 100MB sustained. :) Well, there's that, and since a number of devices in my house are still 802.11b/g only devices (e.g. my Wii), and there are just so many of these wifi enabled devices, I don't expect to get close to the top end throughput rates on these newer 'n' capable APs anyway. That is to say, while operating in the 2.4Ghz space, I'm still going to have to wait for my 54MB devices to send their frames before I get the chance to transmit my frames at 150 - 600MB. Just having that second 5Ghz band and singel spatial stream is good enough, I think. Make sense? On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Frank Sweetser <fs@wpi.edu> wrote:
On 10/13/2010 10:48 AM, John Stoffel wrote:
> "Frank" == Frank Sweetser <fs@WPI.EDU> writes:
Frank> On 10/13/2010 10:26 AM, John Stoffel wrote:
Guys,
I'm looking to replace my WAP54G (802.11bg) wireless access point. I really need to get more speed to the wife's computer, and I don't want to run wires.
I'm thinking I'd like to get something that DD-WRT can run on, and possibly something with dual radios and/or dual 2.4ghz and 5.0ghz band, so I can have a secured network, and an open, slower network for guests.
My home network looks like this:
cable modem <---> router <----> GigE Lan switch <-- clients | | WAP54G
Frank> Congratulations, you're me a month ago =)
Heh, so where do you end up putting your new wireless router in your network? Did you replace the core router, or add on? Yeah I'm a professional SysAdmin, but I don't do the network side day to day... so I want to stay secure. Probably way too paranoid, but that's me.
I threw out everything else and I'm just using the netgear for everything. I didn't bother to set it up, but openwrt does support setting up a second guest wireless network if you want to segment guests off from your own machines.
Frank> The only glitch there is that it's a little more strict about Frank> wireless security behaviour, so some non-compliant devices Frank> (droid1 phones running android 2.2, in my case) can't associate Frank> at WPA2/AES.
Bummers. :] That's why I figure I'll keep around my old WAP54G for wep devices and stuff that I don't care about much.
I was able to get them running by limiting encryption down to WPA/TKIP. Of course, AES is required for 11n speeds, so I'll be mucking around with this more when either the phones or the router has a new update available =)
Frank> I've heard very good things about the buffalo devices, Frank> especially since they ship with dd-wrt from the factory. They Frank> don't have the same performance (again, smallnetbuilder has Frank> excellent benchmarks for side by side comparisons), but are a Frank> lot cheaper. One drawback of that particular model at least is Frank> that it's single band, 2.4GHz only. Personally I strongly Frank> recommend going with a dual band device, as 2.4 these days Frank> tends to be a pea soup of interference, while the 5GHz bands Frank> that 11a uses has a lot more open channels available.
Yeah, I think I really want dual band, dual radio, gigabit. Going to have to pay for it though. But if the device lasts, I'm not too upset.
Yeah, that's exactly why I opted to pony up for the netgear (about $150) instead of the cheaper buffalo.
-- Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that WPI Senior Network Engineer | is simple, elegant, and wrong. - HL Mencken GPG fingerprint = 6174 1257 129E 0D21 D8D4 E8A3 8E39 29E3 E2E8 8CEC _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug